Finding Peace

As beautiful as it is pathetic. Well groomed for everything except life's bitter realities; as at that age, no less. It is easy to take a comfortably distant view of this, but, when you really ponder you begin to realize that, no matter how much ammunition you have built up to sequester yourself from this, there is, essentially, no guarantor of your life's prospects. Anything might happen, as did to that female Texan police officer who 'innocently' shot that black man for being in 'her' apartment.

There really are people, even in distracted, morbid, stupid, 'intellectually challenged' Philadelphia, where people will actually not only notice these folks, but spend some time with such. Unfortunately, too many genuine freeloaders sully the mix here and dilute the legitimate merit for some. I wish I had the answers. - David Lyga

Well said, David. In my area, we have a fairly large transient population. The north to south/winter to summer route. The image of the person in the photo is imbedded in my mind.

It strikes me that the subject really is "finding peace." I notice the way she sits, her posture, and the fact that she's writing.

Maybe she's a Buddhist.

@jtk She did seem peaceful. She was unable to communicate, just garbled speech. Can't get the scene out of my mind.

In her own way she is CREATING peace, in a method unknown to those not yet initiated, like us. This is nature's way of a workaround and speaks volumes of the incapacity for a 'coherent' modern culture that, essentially, knows little about the overall human condition, even though that culture is replete with 'smart' technology.

Garbled speech obviates the ability to complain about one's genuinely sordid lot in life. The subliminal, but definitive truth is that she has no other capacity to communicate because we do NOT WANT her to have an alternative way to be ABLE to communicate. We wax with sympathy, for public consumption, but we do not want to deal with her in our lives other than from a comfortable and strictly enforced distance.

Here, for these words, I am not evincing an overriding sense of humanity, even though I might seem like I am because I write so 'wordy' and, thus, seemingly 'worthier than thou'.. NO, I am just as phony as the next. Like it or not, she teaches a better lesson than David Lygs's words can deliver. She teaches a better lesson than does a Professor Emeritus.

She teaches a lesson that I hope someday, somehow, to earn the moral capacity to learn, discern, and never spurn, because such 'street wisdom' provides a direct spotlight onto our darker, inadequate minds. - David Lyga

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/187469/the-way-of-zen-by-alan--watts/9780307784346/

Gerry, that's a fine photo. I'm sure David L agrees.